As I was starting the first paragraph of this column Saturday morning, an AM radio station announcer was blurting – “Humanda na kayo for a P1 per kwh increase in your electricity bill by next week.”

Daunting? Far from it. The wry announcement does not seem to jolt the average Filipino wage-earner. Why?

The Filipino is at his best in conservation or, better still, in economizing energy consumption in his household.

That shows the much-vaunted resiliency of the Filipino, especially when trying times hit his pocket.

He joins the Europeans and Americans in welcoming the so-called “green technology in power generation” that is staging a big come-back.

The TIME magazine issue last January 25, Page 39, a news feature cheerfully foresees a potential boom in sources of alternative energy – solar power being one of them - as oil prices climb.

Let us take a look of what the American newsmagazine is reporting on the resurgence of solar energy production and sale in major cities around the world: Germany, the world’s top market for solar electricity, installed last year 2,500 megawatts out of the world’s 5,362.

China is home to half of all solar manufacturers (four of the top 10 panel makers, including the No. 2, Suntech.)

Norway’s REC, together with Dutch research institute ECN, unveiled a 17 percent more efficient solar module.

Other makers like First Solar are improving the technology especially of “thin film” in which an energy generating substance – cadmium telluride – is layered into a glass, plastic or steel substrate.

In San Francisco, California, First Solar said “2010 would be less volatile and more predictable.” It will add more assembly lines to boost its thin film outputs.

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FAIR GAME. Election issues unearthed by one political campaigner after another are veritable Pandora’s box. What they bring into the open are hitherto unknown issues to us watching from the sidelines.

Ergo, things we never get to know, if they were not for the entertainment portion of the election campaign – the “war of attrition” that is being waged in the arena called the entablado, or the campaign stage.

Here are a sampling as unraveled by Cavite Rep. Crispin “Boying” Remulla in an e-mail statement that found its way to the web-address of this columnist: Hacienda Luisita and Tadeco were reportedly paid R83 million for the right-of-way for the SCTEX project. Reclassified were some 3,290 hectares, out of 4,915, from agricultural to commercial, industrial and residential. The cost of the interchange that linked the hacienda to SCTEX was P170 million, the statement said.

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BELATED ‘THANKS.’ My sincere apologies to Prof. Giovanna V. Fontanilla, UST public affairs director; and Winston F. Garcia, GSIS president and general manager, for acknowledging this late the greeting cards and token gifts they sent me during the holidays last year.